Things need to change

I understand the history of Op Brock and that it was brought in as a temporary measure to replace Operation Stack, primarily as a solution in preparation for EU Exit. It has already started to become the 'new normal' for all traffic disruption at the ports, no longer just for EU Exit issues. As a previous member of the Emergency Services, I have a lot of knowledge of Op Brock and it is a much better replacement for Op Stack, as it does have the contraflow that allows two way movement on the M20 and does alleviate some of the congestion issues on the A20 that were previously experienced with Op Stack. Also Op Stack was very police resource intensive, Op Brock does not require the same amount of resources, so is much better use of public money and freeing up important police resources to do much better things. But it is not the long term solution and there does need to be a long term lorry park built in the right location, close to the port to contain up to 4,000 lorries.

As a local Bearsted resident, Op Brock does disrupt the local community, personally we have to regularly travel to Ashford to take our son to school and when Op Brock is activated this adds additional travel to our journey as we cannot join at junction 8 and have to go back to junction 7 to join the motorway, with an impact on the extra time for our journey every day and extra cost on fuel. We also see the impact of lorries trying to bypass Op Brock and trying to come through the village of Bearsted along Ware Street, this completely congests the village, with many lorries getting stuck in the village or by the railway bridge.